Yeah, I didn't mean to downplay LotR by any stretch. Especially since, as you said, he's drawing on existing mythologies (including elements of Arthurian legend). I also like that he made a point to avoid Christianizing his works, unlike C.S. Lewis' Narnia novels. I've always felt fantasy literature should deliberately leave out political or religious promotion (otherwise it's not fantasy!). I was disappointed as a child when I found out the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were meant to teach religion. I would be equally disappointed if I found a current fantasy novelist was trying to comment on some political situation in the world (in fact I remember reading an essay by Tolkien somewhere where he said he made great pains to avoid having his works look like parallels with the real world and any that do exist in his works are coincidence - that he wasn't drawing on WWI or WWII, etc. as inspiration).

But I digress - something I've made an art of

I'll have to dig up where I read about the Arthur-Mordred duality. There are a number of modern fantasy novelists who've written variations on Arthur, with Merlin sometimes being an evil wizard and so on. I haven't read any but I may yet.

I have indeed heard of Joseph Campbell. His novel the Hero with A Thousand Faces is on my must read list. Stephen LaBerge's Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming mentions it and I've since intended to pick it up. That would've been awesome, having studied comparative mythology, I have a particular interest in the phenomenon of mischief gods and the parallel with Prometheus and the Devil, I like stories which make him a misunderstood persona rather than a demon (Anne Rice's Memnoch the Devil springs to mind here). Though teaching English has its merit as well (but maybe I'm bias since that's what I do too :D)